I’m planning to switch to RISC-V by 2030, and since this is new to me (I’m an old AMD64 (and i386) veteran), I wanted to ask what your thoughts and predictions are regarding performance, stability, and usability as a creator of all kinds of content, whether it’s music, movies, 3D, or watching cat videos on YouTube. I’m also planning to buy a new, fresh computer, maybe a laptop from around 2027/2028. Is that a good idea, or am I biting off more than I can chew? To sum up, I’m asking for your opinions, advice, warnings, and thoughts. Feel free to write not only answers to my questions but anything you consider important in the context of the RISC-V and Linux marriage in the near future
As non_burglar said, RISC-V is so far mostly used for small chips for embedded systems. This could change in the future, of course, but you might not have a good RISC-V laptop by 2027-28. There is also a concern that the chips themselves need not be open-source, but there have been open-source designs such as XiangShan, which is comparable to A76.
Currently, your options are DeepComputing’s DC-ROMA, which uses a SpacemiT SoC K1, and Framework’s Laptop 13, which has a StarFive JH7110. Neither CPU is fully open.
On the software side, there is better news. Debian has accepted RISC-V as one of its main architectures.